We editors are always looking for new angles for the same old topics — called “evergreens” — that we have to cover year after year. Holidays are particularly ripe: how many ways can you cover Valentine’s Day? But still, I was surprised to see that both the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle ran stories today on whether vegetarians and meat-eaters (or other couple who can’t line up gastronomically) can really make it work.

For me, it’s not so much about what a guy eats, it’s whether the person’s attitude towards food is an indicator of his attitude towards other things. My last boyfriend didn’t like food, period, and we started dating at a time when I was starting to really enjoy food and get in touch with my senses.

He was a really good sport at the beginning, trying different things that I would cook and places I would want to go to eat. At a certain point, though, he stopped trying, sticking to just the burritos, pizza, and one of three different brunch combinations (two of which involved scrambled eggs) that he ate before he met me. And he stopped trying in the relationship, too.

But when my unflappable friend Katie married a vegetarian, she took it all in stride. She doesn’t avoid meat when she’s out with us, but she cooks great vegetarian food at home. Rather than look at it as giving something up, it seems that she’s relished the challenge.

So maybe the real issue is: if someone can’t compromise on food, does that mean they can’t compromise on other things? After all, if you’re going to dig in your heels about not wanting to eat a meal someone’s cooked for you, when the real purpose of a dinner or meal is to spend time with each other (and satisfy one of our basic needs as humans), how will you behave when you reach an impasse over something important? You know, like how to raise your kids.

So it’s not that I wouldn’t date a vegetarian (vegan, I’d be wary of), but if he drew a line in the sand and only wanted to eat at certain restaurants — his restaurants — well, that’s a dealbreaker. Because someone who turns dining out into an adversarial situation is not going to be a fun person to have any disagreement with.